


what was i thinking when we set down our love?

by la_victorienne



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-28
Updated: 2009-01-28
Packaged: 2018-10-16 01:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10560724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_victorienne/pseuds/la_victorienne
Summary: a missing moment, set directly after adam's brutal mind violation of ianto and before jack enters.





	

  
winter came down to our home one night  
quietly pirouetting in on  
silver-toed slippers of snow  
and we, we were children once again  
-Bill Morgan, Jr. 

Ianto is drifting.

He’s not sure how long he’s been here; the memory came upon him suddenly – though he can’t remember quite how – and he’s been sick with it for what feels like ages, but by now it’s faded into a dull nausea splashing in waves over his body, allowing his mind to remember other things, better things, in an effort to get rid of the bitter, discrete tastes of cold rain and high-pitched screams. Now he’s sixteen, smoking cheap fags and drinking cheaper liquor, swearing and punching and getting in trouble; now he’s twelve, leaning over the rail above the quay before his mam hauls him back with a single, worn hand; now he’s seven, watching the rhythmic motion of Tad’s sewing machine in a trance, captivated by the order and symmetry of it all. All times are now, and he is in any time but that one, where the women look up at him with the same terrified expression, and he feels that familiar rise of sheer, ecstatic, seductive pleasure coiling in his belly. Any time but then, please, any time but then.

He registers, slowly, the things that mean “home” to him, the things that mean “torchwood” to him. He is leaning against the bars of the steps to the catwalk, where he once saw Jack give him a pleading look, palms together, on the night that Lisa died – oh, god, Lisa. He doesn’t remember what happened to her, just that she’s gone, and maybe that’s a good thing because there is the pteranodon, flying aimlessly around the ceiling, deliberately avoiding her aerie, even though it’s time for her to sleep, which he does remember. Something has her drifting, too, and she lets out a cry that one might mistake for care if one, like Ianto, thought that pteranodons actually had the capacity to care, or to have serotonin levels. The cry almost makes him smile. And there is the blue-flecked computer screen, the glowing keyboard, the empty coffee mug that Tosh leaves every afternoon to stain rings into the desk that Ianto cleans up every night. He feels like he’s in a children’s book – remember that this is that, and that is this, and good night to every little sleepy thing, sleep well, do not fear, there’s no such thing as monsters.

Except there is such a thing.

And he is one.

And he _likes it_.


End file.
